6 Psychological Hacks to Make Visitors Stay Longer on Your Site

Have you ever thought why some websites gather dozens of leads a day and others don’t? The thing is that visitors need some reasons to stay longer on your site. Here are six psychological hacks you could use to find those reasons and also increase your conversion rates

1.Use Testimonials and Real Customers’ Photos to Retain a Visitor

The word-of-mouth marketing uses the strongest psychological tool – real people comments and stories on how they used a particular brand. Prospects take their decisions easier when they see other people’s positive experience with the same product or service. And this fact is also proved by a 2013 survey which reports that 90% of customers make their buying decisions after they study online reviews. Hence, you should use testimonials in the top section of a landing page before a CTA button. Besides, the scientists of Nielsen Norman Group confirm that all crucial components must be above the page fold (the part to which you land first) because 80% of visitors pay attention to this part the most and become too lazy to scroll to the footer section.

Testimonials of regular customers are the best tools to persuade your future prospects in the worthiness of dealing with you. And if you don’t know how to get them, ask a customer to leave his comment on the purchased product or service in return for a discount on the next order.

2.Catch your Visitor’s Eye with the High-Quality Images

People buy with their eyes – another old advertising rule which now is the main tool of inbound marketing too. The more targeted image you place on a landing page the more leads you might acquire. Your chances to attract the visitors’ attention and overcome some distrust issues will double if you place photos of real people in the testimonials and at the background. Though pictures are emotional drivers, they should support your main message. Even if photos are shiny and pretty, they can distract and confuse your readers. There are thousands of examples on the web how to choose the most appropriate image for the background but you should also encourage both a designer and a copywriter to deliver the best combination of visual and text content.

3.Follow the F-pattern and Gutenberg diagram

I’ve discovered a difference between brick-and-mortar and web copies in Maria Veloso’s book Web Copy that sells where Jacob Nielsen studies were also mentioned. And according to them, 79% of websites’ visitors skim pages and only 16% of them actually read every word. Which is why marketers use F-shaped pattern when they develop effective landing pages.

It’s a psychological fact that we begin scanning from the left side to the right spending 69% of our time at the left half and only 30% at the right one. The second most scannable section is a bullet list which helps catch the reader’s attention. Therefore, you should put some statistics or numbers in those parts to make a reader stumble and rescan your message. However, when you place information in a bullet list, put the strongest points at the beginning and in the end. Because as a recent study has showed any piece of information is recalled the worst in the middle of the list.

Another study focuses on the reading gravity pattern called the Guttenberg Diagram. It divides a page into 4 areas readability and shows the targeted quadrants for placing the most important information. If you look at the picture below, you’ll see that the blind spot is quadrant #3. Most likely, a visitor will leave your message unnoticed if you put its main points there.

You must have heard about neuromarketing which many famous brands such as Microsoft and Google use. According to various studies, the human’s brain behavior determines all buying decisions especially if we are scared enough. And do you remember a famous Zig Ziglar’s quote “The fear of loss is greater than the desire to gain”? During the reign of outbound marketing, this huge motivator was so overused by marketers that soon consumers began detecting such hype and left a selling page with browbeating content. However, the fear of loss is still used by many inbound copywriters because it is the strongest emotion you can touch with a few words and a picture.

If you want to persuade a visitor to become a prospect and a customer as a result, you’ve got to use BYAF (‘But You Are Free’) technique. Its efficiency was confirmed with several studies, one of which demonstrated 47.5% of positive answers to the request completed with four words ‘But you are free to refuse’. And what’s more interesting people who agreed gave twice more money than it was expected. Many therapists use this psychological hack to show a patient that the door is always open and it’s his choice to stay and fight for the complete recovery or go home and continue suffering. The freedom of choice makes people feel some control over the situation.

6.Repeat One Idea Several Times to Create the Illusory Truth Effect

The influence of repetition in advertising was never underestimated. And I do remember the main rule I had to learn on my first day in a marketing team – repeat the message at least three times through the text. But how can repetition of the same idea build credibility and trust? It’s called the illusory truth effect which entailed many experiments and tests. Their results showed that people rate the repeated sentences as true more often. Scientists explain such a phenomenon with implicit memory and incidental learning issues which in their turn affect our judgments and beliefs.